


The Non-Existent Diary of a Junkie

by Merfilly



Category: DCU - Comicverse
Genre: Drug Addiction, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-10-24
Updated: 2007-10-24
Packaged: 2017-12-12 12:01:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/811391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/pseuds/Merfilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Roy, how he fell, and how he coped</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Non-Existent Diary of a Junkie

Leaving the reservation had been bittersweet at best. He knew Raymond was dying. Knew that his carefree days as Brave Bow's best student were gone. Raymond had done all he could to put Roy with a man better suited to teaching him than the system would have dished out, honoring his life debt to Roy's father one more time.

Roy just knew he'd screw up, the same way he had by looking at the girls, by daring to kiss one of them. The boys had set him straight. He was just a young lagaii hastiin, a white boy not worth the dirt they smeared his bloody face in once they were through showing him his place.

Green Arrow was okay. He'd been pretty damn condescending and a smart ass, but Roy could work with that. By the end of that first year, he was dishing out the smart ass comments just as well as his mentor.

Ollie Queen, on the other hand? Not so easy to be comfortable around. Roy had never really thought of himself as poor, but living in a rich white man's mansion? Kind of rammed the point home. He couldn't quite get used to it. And Ollie himself was too…well, he'd be there, and trying too damn hard to be sure Roy was fitting in, and then he wouldn't be. Especially if there was a dame. Any dame. 

Of course, the womanizing was part of the rich playboy image, or that's what Roy decided, since the news was always full of that rich snot in Gotham and his conquests. If it had the side effect of having these women moon over him, well, there were worse fates for a thirteen-year-old boy.

He sometimes wondered what Ollie would have said to just what Miss Arrowette had to teach Speedy when Green Arrow was a little too busy for her. Then again, if Miss Arrowette hadn't had to go away, there might have been someone to notice the growing distance between GA and his erstwhile sidekick. 

At first, Roy thought it was because of his summertime involvement with the Titans. Maybe spending so much time away from Star City had given Ollie the impression Roy didn't need him around so much. Maybe it was just that things between GA and his doll, Black Canary were too intense, and who needed a kid hanging around when you could be getting into those 'nets?  
But when Ollie was too busy to get him to the Titans, because he was off running around the country with Hal? Roy came right back around to being the kid who didn't fit in, the kid who wasn't worth dirt. After all, Ollie hadn't even seen fit to introduce him to the Canary as more than 'Speedy, my sidekick' even after the woman started coming home with Green Arrow on odd nights. The sounds that echoed through the house then made Roy alternately clench his eyes shut under a pillow, or just shamelessly imagine that voice so loud for him. He often wondered if the dame even realized how thin the walls were here.

It had been too easy to fall in with those kids. The ones who hung out in the alleys and the streets, shooting hoops and running their mouths. After all, as Speedy, running his mouth was sort of his trademark, right?

They listened. They saw him as one of their own within weeks. They made him a part of their life, and welcomed his tales of woe and abandonment.

Then they gave him the way to not let it bother him so much.

Ollie never questioned the money missing from his wallet. Didn't think to ask why Roy looked so damn tired, whenever the man was actually home. Why should he? It wasn't like Roy mattered to him, after all. Ollie just kept seeing his girl, bringing her home now and then, before Green Arrow was running off at breakneck speed to help Green Lantern with some stupid cause or just to get out of the house. Leaving Speedy on the streets of Star City, and Roy in the arms of his only comfort.

When Ollie started his little war on drugs in Star City, Roy started to glimpse the smoke of the bridge he had burned. In falling in with that crowd, he had managed to prove just how worthless he was. And it all came to a head the night Ollie found out and threw him into the streets.

He had some cash. A few things to hock. It got him by, for a little while.

Then he found out there were some things a worthless white boy who didn't fit in could do pretty good, and it kept him getting his fixes. He began to think this was his lot, the place he deserved, for how easy it came to him. The only time this burned him was when he thought of the Titans. When he imagined Wonder Chick seeing him like this. Or, worse, he had images of Robbie finding him on his knees in an alley, strung out and aching for a hit.

Then Hal Jordan, the mighty Green Lantern, actually came and looked for him. Of course, Hal didn't want to soil his hands and dumped him off on Black Canary. Whose name, it turned out, was Dinah Lance, that real sweet florist Roy had run into once or twice. He wanted to tell her she looked best without the wig, but as sick as he felt, he just prayed she didn't throw him out as soon as Hal left.

Making the choice to kick the habit wasn't because of how he was paying for it. It wasn't for Ollie. It sure as hell wasn't for himself. It was those images of his team, haunting his fevered dreams, the pull of blue eyes and black hair from two people who had never done anything but treat him as an equal.

He chose to get clean for them, so he wouldn't reflect badly on Robbie's leadership, or feel the scorn of Wonder Chick's disapproval. He might not be worth being a Titan, but he sure as hell wasn't going to let it get out that one of their team had been a junkie.

The first day wasn't too bad. The nervousness, the shakes, the nausea…he could cope with them. He became acutely aware of just how strong a small woman could be, though, at the way Dinah supported him through the vomiting, and then through the dry heaves when he couldn't get anything else up. He grew increasingly weak, though, and by the time the chills hit, he just didn't have the reserves to not let it all spill out under her gentle, quiet questions, especially not when she had him coddled to her body, his head on her chest. Telling her his whole life story, not realizing just how adeptly she interrogated him, lifted something of a weight from his shoulders.

When he woke the next day, to hear her telling someone she wasn't coming in, that she was taking care of family, he flushed. It was a polite lie, Roy knew. As soon as she was free to, she'd let him go too.

He couldn't even bear to think of the Titans, those first days after the worst of the cravings had burned themselves out. But he was stronger. He had done it, had kicked the habit, with the support of another raven-haired, blue-eyed beauty. It was more than enough to keep them at the back of his mind, and to focus a destination for where to go, now that he was clean. If he left Dinah before she kicked him out, it would be okay. He could keep pretending her promise was real, to never leave him.

He turned his gaze East, pulled that way by memories of happy times with Titans, pulled by whispered invitations from a girl who could break him in half. Mostly, he went, knowing he had done it all for nothing unless he could look Robbie in the eye, and at least know he could have the acrobat's back. If he couldn't, or if they found out and pushed him away…

Well, he'd been worse than dirt all his life; he was sure he'd find a way to fill some place in life.


End file.
